The Maine Attraction's opening night was a huge success!

We had a great turnout last evening for our opening of The Maine Attraction Exhibition at the Essex Art Association, 10 North Main Street in Essex.

The show continues through the weekend.  I hope you can come.  Tonight is our round table discussion from 7 to 9 PM about plein air painting.  Come learn all about the tricks we use when we paint on location.  You might like to try some of our tips when you paint outdoors. It's a very personal way to record your travels.

Look at all the great treats you missed last night.  We'll have some goodies for tonight too.  Come on out on this rainy day & bask in the wonder of our art.

Here's an idea of where we traveled in Maine.  It's just so awesome everywhere you look in Maine.  We love it!

Do you have beautiful art on your walls?  There's no time like the present to start collecting.  We do!

Later that night (or morning?)...

...I continued painting into early Saturday morning, stopping to video my progress.  I wish I could show you the next installment, but for some reason I can't figure out how.  I keep getting an error message when I try to upload it to my blog.  So, I guess I'll have to skip it.  Next in time sequence is the video below:

I suppose you can hear the fatigue in my voice.  By 5 AM, I was back in bed, having got a good start on two new paintings I hadn't dreamed of when I lay down the night before.  A few hours later, I was back up and ready to continue painting.

Right now, it's time for me to get ready to go to my sister Phyl's wake.  Tomorrow is the funeral, so I won't be blogging--or painting--for a while.  Carpe diem.

Grief affects each person differently....

My way of dealing with the loss of a loved one is to paint.  I began working on two paintings Friday after learning that my elder sister had died.  I am at an uncomfortable point in the grieving and painting processes.  As for the former, I have been sick with flu and subsequent cold for a week, feel exhausted, want to clean my house and am too tired to do so, want to enjoy my daughter who has come from Nevada to be with me and I can't stay awake long enough to do so. 


As for the latter, I awoke Friday evening with two paintings pressing themselves into my consciousness.  I got out of bed and for over three hours began laying them in.  I slept for a few more hours, got up and worked on both pieces more.  Since then, all I've done is write about them and sleep some more.


Add to all this, I am so frustrated with myself because I still have not learned how to download videos from my camera.  For whatever reason, before dawn on Saturday morning, I decided to make videos of the progress I was making on each piece as I painted.  Well, yesterday, I showed you the photos of that progress on the 10 x 20" horizontal I have decided to entitle "In the Valley...." 


This is the start I made of the 24 x 12" vertical, "Blue Sky Day."   I've discovered that I only made this one still shot; the rest is on video.  [scream]   I had blocked in the main areas in underpainting and then had gone back in with the beginnings of color:

"Blue Sky Day" is the vertical 12" x 24" version.

In the 1960's when I was working part-time at a detective agency [honestly], I read the book Archy and Mehitabel, written by Don Marquis some time in the 20's.  Quoting from the DonMarquis.com website:


Archy is a cockroach with the soul of a poet, and Mehitabel is an alley cat with a celebrated past — she claims she was Cleopatra in a previous life. Together, cockroach and cat are the foundation of one of the most engaging collections of light poetry to come out of the twentieth century.


I loved Marquis's humor, especially this phrase, which applies to me right now:  "Whatthehell, whatthehell, toujours gaie, toujours gaie!"  On that note, I'll call it quits for today.  Au revoir, mes amis!